Metro
TIME
MEMBER
Uarl
riel
"The most important part of the Holocaust today is our link to the survivors."
Stories by Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News
H
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Leo Beals of Lathrup
Village lights a
candle to remember.
He was in Auschwitz
from November 1942
until it was liberated
in 1945.
•
olocaust survivors and their families and friends gathered at the
Holocaust Memorial Center (HMC) in Farmington Hills on Sunday
afternoon to remember, to memorialize and to gather strength
from being together.
Later in the evening, many were among the 400 persons who gathered at
the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield for a memorial that drew a
broader cross-section of the community to hear Professor Susannah Heschel
of Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. (See related story).
The core of our community's survivor organizations — the HMC, Shaarit
Haplaytah ("Surviving Remnant"), Hidden Children, Child Survivors
Association of Michigan and CHAIM (Children of Holocaust Survivors in
Michigan) — organized the afternoon Holocaust Remembrance Day pro-
gram, which included readings, speeches, a candle-lighting and prayers.
For many years, snowbirds have scheduled their return to Detroit in
order to be together at this program; so it was again this year with the room
packed with survivors, their spouses and their children.
The annual commemoration made it clear that the number of living
Holocaust survivors in Metro Detroit is in its inevitable decline. About 1,000
survivors remain and the program makes a great effort to honor and reas-
sure them that their stories will never be forgotten and their suffering will
not be in vain.
Thoughtful Moments
HMC President Gary Karp offered a welcome to survivors and their families
and underscored the importance of the lessons they have to teach.
"The most important lesson of the Holocaust is that a murderous evil
must be stopped early, when it is still in its infancy and before it can carry
out its designs:' he said, quoting Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
in a speech last January that he gave at Auschwitz, a network of concentra-
tion and extermination camps built and operated in occupied Poland by
Nazi Germany during World War II.
"In a world where the number of Holocaust survivors is diminishing, we
should all embrace the unique opportunity to hear their stories of courage,
valor and perseverance," Karp said. "We must expose as many people as pos-
sible to their firsthand accounts."
Before presiding over the ceremonial lighting of the nine-branched meno-
rah with Shaarit Haplaytah President Abe Weberman, Stephen Goldman, the
new HMC executive director attending his first Yom HaShoah in Michigan,
also praised the survivors.
"These survivors, in spite of the nightmares, set their deepest feelings and
fears aside to repeat their stories of survival over and over to school children
and others who come to learn the truth of the darkest chapter in history'
Goldman said.
"I pledge, and I hope, that each of you will join me to be a witness for
these witnesses; to bear their stories into the future that our children and our
grandchildren to 120 generations will never forget the Holocaust," he said.
Dr. Charles Slow, the founder and director of CHAIM, well understands
the importance of the impact of Holocaust history and education for the
future, but cautions not to forget that "the Holocaust is not just history it is
Yom HaShoah on page 12
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